Re: [Critical-Realism] Powers,processes, etc.

[<gdemetrion@xxxxxxx>]

"But in terms of the horizon of RTS, since one of the things that we are doing is attending to that, the main thing to note is just how wildly different even an only vaguely theorized notion of a causal mechanism (or "powerful particular," from Harre and Madden) is from the ontology assumed by Hume, and the account of "laws" and "explanation" to which the Humean ontology gives rise.  Think Hempel."

Ruth,

Thanks for the insight and resources on scientific essentialism, the later term in particular which has gotten bad press in postmodern circles.  Both Popper and Dewey, too, critique essentialism even as both move well beyond Hume as well as positivism.  Dewey speaks a lot about potentiality which perhaps is not too different from the notion of generative mechanisms which may or may not be realized in any given context.  In that he is moving toward ontology even as he tends to focus on the immanence of the potentially transcendent which becomes "created" out of what happens; what causal mechanisms are operationalized in any given context.

Thus related to Merv's counter-critique of calls for more creative dialogue among various schools of philosophy, the critical issue in my view is greater convergence among closely related schools of thought; hence, the need for convergence (and not just an emphasis on distinctions) between critical pragmatism, critical realism, and critical rationalism particularly in their common postpositivist mediating outlook in which truth as a "regulative ideal" grounds all of their epistemologies. It is this, I believe, which distinguishes their common outlook from both positivism and postmodernism--a mediating postpositvism.  My objective here is less to critique critical realism in that for the most part critical pragmatism and critical rationalism have not engaged each other to any significant way even as there has been some good discussion between early pragmatism and the American critical realism of the early 20th century reviewed from the bias of pragmatism in David Hildebrand's (2003)  Beyond Realism and Anti-Realism. A related text edited by John Shook (2003) one of the foremost pragmatic philosophers of the contempoary era Pragmatic Naturalism & Realism is highly sophisticated in the range of philosophical discourse it incorporates.  There is some brief reference to Bhaskar in one of the essays, but nowhere in this highly important text is critical realism as a school of philosophical thought engaged in the effort to explore the relationship between naturalism and realism.   

So the shoe that fits applies to many feet.  The issue is not to point figures as this problem is grounded in the history of the development of the academic disciplines where specialization, in itself a highly desirable trait

Thus when I think of Bhaskar's claim that critical realism is the most adequate philosophy has taken on aura of mystification of its own which in many significant ways has the pragmatic effect of short-circuiting the search for truth at a high level of interdisciplinary discourse, particularly among related schools of thought where a critical search for convergences has a great deal to offer, including that of putting differences into more balanced perspective

George Demetrion
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